Always Managing: My Autobiography, page 22
Yet every player I bought with the money from Ferdinand had an asterisk next to his name – there was a reason they were in the market for a move to West Ham. Some proved they could do it in the Premier League, others failed. Put Ferguson or David Moyes in my place and they would have been gambling just the same. Even inside the elite every manager has a list of signings that haven’t worked out – but the further down the league you go, the longer that list gets. I still don’t think my later buys at West Ham were bad. Fredi Kanouté and Marc-Vivien Foé were sold on for a profit, Di Canio was a great buy. If West Ham had kept all of my players together, including the younger ones like Rio, I sincerely believe we would have ended up in the Champions League.
Ultimately, though, the end of my relationship with the chairman wasn’t over anything as meaningful as league position of transfer policy – it was an interview I gave to a West Ham fanzine called Over Land and Sea. It was run by Gary Firmager, a typical West Ham nut and a bit of a lad. I used to speak to him once a year on the record, and was probably a bit more open than I would be with a national newspaper journalist. Gary was a fan, and he was writing for West Ham fans, and that made me more relaxed. I thought he deserved straight answers to straight questions. You can probably see where this is heading now.
Gary started quoting some figures given to him by the chairman about the amount of the Ferdinand money that had been spent. I thought they were misleading. Instead of taking in the simple transfer fee, Brown had included wages, signing-on fees, bonuses, cars, houses, agents’ fees, every last penny of expense to make the deal seem as costly as possible. Fine – but then why not add the money saved on Rio’s wages, bonuses and other sundry costs to his £18 million transfer. You can’t have it both ways. As Gary reeled off these figures – and the chairman had said Davor Šuker’s free transfer had cost as much as the gate receipts from East Stand – I didn’t think Terry was being fair. I made a flippant comment. ‘Calls himself an accountant,’ I said. ‘He can’t fucking add up.’ It’s a mistake I certainly wouldn’t make now.
Until that point, while my relationship with the chairman was hardly perfect, I had no clue this was to be my last season at West Ham. We had been talking about a new contract and all the signs were positive. I had two years left on my existing deal, but Brown wanted me to sign a four-year extension. He had been waiting for me to put pen to paper for six months. It was me that had been dragging my feet. Until we were mathematically assured of survival, I had more important things on my mind. Terry was OK with that, to be fair. Mick Maguire of the Professional Footballers’ Association was doing the deal for me and he kept calling to say Terry had been on wanting to get the deal done, but I’d put him off. ‘It’s no problem, I’ve got two years left,’ I’d tell him. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere.’ Shortly before the end of the season, I saw Terry in his office and we talked about the length of the contract. ‘Four years and that’ll finish me, Terry,’ I told him. ‘Another four years and I’m done.’ ‘Harry, I want you for ten years, not four,’ he replied. He could not have been nicer.
Sadly, I had more pressing problems immediately after that. My mum, Violet, died the week before we played at Manchester City on 28 April, and everything else went by the wayside. We’d had a house built in the grounds of our place in Dorset for Mum and Dad, because I thought the sea air would be good for her, but she wouldn’t move down. She died in Poplar, in the same place that we always lived.
As for the football, the way the league worked out, we were not mathematically safe until we defeated Southampton 3–0 on 5 May, the penultimate game of the season. Now was the time to clear my head and sort out my future at West Ham. I thought we would need a substantial investment again in the summer and I was going to talk it all through with Terry before the final game of the season at Middlesbrough. I was going to get that contract signed while I was in there, too.
On the Monday after the Southampton win, I was on my way home from training. Kevin Bond and Ted Pearce, our chief scout, were in the car and I was on my way back to Bournemouth. I had stopped to refuel at a petrol station in Chigwell when the phone rang. It was Mick Maguire. ‘Hello, Harry,’ he said. ‘What you done? I’ve just spoken to Terry Brown about coming tomorrow to do the contract properly and he’s gone all the other way. Every time I speak to him it’s always, “Harry this, Harry that, Harry’s great, Harry’s the best.” Now he’s saying he doesn’t know if he wants to do the contract at all. He wouldn’t tell me why. He just says he’s not happy with you. What’s up?’
I told him I hadn’t a clue.
‘I think you’d better find out,’ said Mick.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll go and see him in the morning,’ I said. Mick offered to accompany me, but I refused. Whatever the problem was, I thought, it wouldn’t be anything that we couldn’t resolve.
I was wrong about that. In the time between the ten-year contract talk and Mick’s conversation, that month’s edition of Over Land and Sea had dropped, with my interview all over it. Terry read that stuff religiously. He didn’t like some of the language I used, and he certainly didn’t like being told he couldn’t add up. When I walked into his office, he had his speech prepared. ‘I’m not happy with one or two things,’ he said. ‘I think it’s time to call it a day.’
And that was it. Do I regret giving that interview now? Absolutely. It did for me, I am sure of that. Nothing else had changed between our two conversations other than the publication of some rather rash comments on my part. I don’t think Gary Firmager tried to trick me, either, I just believe it is very easy to fall into conversation sometimes, and not realise how different those words will appear in black and white. I didn’t mean anything by it – I was just defending my corner against what I saw as a rather unfair appraisal of my record in the transfer market. I didn’t think Terry would take it personally, but that was me at the time – I always had to bite, I couldn’t let it pass.
It was a bolt from the blue, but I think I was most upset when Terry told me that he wanted Frank to leave, too. ‘What are you talking about?’ I asked. ‘He’s more West Ham than you’ll ever be.’ Managers get the sack, we all know that, but few give a thought for the staff, who are often shown the door having done nothing wrong. That was the case with Frank. As I said, he loved West Ham so much he used to work with the kids for nothing before becoming my assistant. If Terry was upset with me, fair enough, but what had Frank said or done to get the sack?
Terry got rid of Les Sealey, the goalkeeping coach, too, and that really saddened me. Les was one of the best characters you could hope to meet: trained with the reserve team, trained with the kids, trained Tuesday and Thursday night with the academy – absolutely lived for the club. His uncle, Alan, played for West Ham, as did Les. He was a club man to his boots and absolutely fantastic at his job. I’ll tell you the sort of boy he was. One night we were playing Aston Villa and I had two mates up from Bournemouth. I planned to take them home after the game, but we lost. I’m horrible when we lose: I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to socialise, I don’t want to do anything. I just wanted to go back to my flat up the road and shut the door. My pals were stranded. The last trains were gone and they were facing a night in a hotel. Les offered to take them home. He only lived up the road in Essex, yet he drove all the way to Bournemouth, and all the way back. That was Les. Just a great guy who would do anything for you. I couldn’t believe that West Ham got rid of him. He was the life and soul of the dressing room and it hurt him terribly. I could have cried when he called me up and told me the news. He died of a heart attack, four months later, at the age of 43. His death came as a terrible shock.
Looking back, of course, Terry already had my replacement lined up – and just like with Tony Pulis at Bournemouth it was someone I had brought to the club. I had met Glenn Roeder at a dinner to honour Kenny Dalglish in London one Sunday night. He was a player I knew well. ‘What have you been up to?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said, morosely. ‘I’ve been out of the game for two years, Harry. It’s driving me mad. I don’t think I’ve got any option but to look for work outside football.’
‘Where do you live?’ I asked, thinking of some scouting work.
‘About five minutes from your training ground,’ he said.
‘Right,’ I told him, ‘come in tomorrow, bring your boots, you can do a little bit with some of the kids.’
We had a group – Jimmy Bullard and a few other teenagers who couldn’t get in the first team – that we called the development squad. ‘Come in and take them,’ I told Glenn. ‘We can’t pay you, but it’ll get you out of the house. Come to my office afterwards, we’ll have a cup of tea. See how we go from there.’
The next day, when Glenn arrived, Tony Carr and Peter Brabrook, our youth coaches, were straight over. ‘What you brought him here for?’ Peter said. ‘We’re doing well with the kids. Bloody hell, Harry, he’ll be after our jobs, won’t he?’
‘Don’t worry,’ I assured him, ‘he’s not after anyone’s job. The fella’s just sitting at home, nothing to do, so I said he could come in and work with us. Trust me, he’s a nice guy. He’s just going to take the little group that needs a bit of individual attention. He was a good player, maybe he can help them.’
Amazing, isn’t it? The job he ended up taking was mine.
After that, I got Glenn doing a bit of scouting so he could earn some money, then more coaching with the youth team, and we had a great year. We went on and won the FA Youth Cup and, as Glenn was a part of that, at the end of the season he received a full-time contract. Terry Brown was delighted with the appointment. Just how delighted, I later found out.
Yet Glenn could never replicate what we had at West Ham, and his second season in charge ended in relegation. He was sacked early in the next campaign after losing away at Rotherham United.
I felt for my friends, like Frank and Les, but I don’t hold any grudges against Terry Brown. He paid me every last penny of the two years that remained on my contract and, a number of years later, when I went to Southampton, their chairman Rupert Lowe said that Terry had given me a fantastic reference. I know there have been all sorts of dark rumours about the real reason I left Upton Park, but I think, in the end, it was just one argument too many. If I had done anything seriously wrong, the chairman would not have paid me up. It was a clash of personalities, nothing more sinister than that.
I do regret leaving the way I did. I was happy there, we had some great years, I worked with some finest players and loved it. Years later, the young players at Portsmouth and Southampton would ask me about coaching Rio Ferdinand, Joe Cole and young Frank, the way those players used to ask me about playing with Bobby Moore or Geoff Hurst. And while we had a bad year that last season, we had hung on, survived, and I think we could have moved forward again had I stayed. In the end, the way I spoke about Terry, in that interview and at other times, was wrong. I took liberties, I pushed him too far, and I shouldn’t have done that. Even now, he’s not a popular figure at West Ham, but when I’ve seen him we’ve always shook hands and he’s been fine with me.
So how do I see my time at West Ham now? Well, looking at their fortunes since, first and most importantly, we were never relegated. They went down under John Lyall, under Billy Bonds before I arrived, and they have gone down twice since then – and some would argue were lucky not to go down in 2007, too, the year of the Carlos Tevez transfer. But West Ham were not a yo-yo club while I was in charge. We established ourselves as a strong Premier League team with ambitions to play in Europe. I always looked to sign guys who could play, like Paolo Di Canio, and the youngsters we brought through the club were players that people would pay to watch all day. There were times when we would just destroy teams, or win against the odds, like we did against Manchester United at Old Trafford in the FA Cup. We finished above Tottenham three years on the spin from 1997–98 to 1999–2000 and the team that went down two years later wouldn’t have ended up relegated had I been in charge, I’m sure of that.
We came fifth in 1997–98. Which doesn’t sound much compared to the achievements of Sir Alex Ferguson, but then we weren’t Manchester United. I wish West Ham well in their move to the Olympic Stadium but, even if they can fill a 50,000 seater arena, unless someone comes in with mega money to buy the club, I think my Premier League record finish is safe for a long time yet.
CHAPTER TEN
GOING UP
I first met Milan Mandaric during my time in America. New York Cosmos had the star players but Milan had the highest profile of any owner. To the Americans, who didn’t know much about football, he was as famous as Pelé or Franz Beckenbauer. The fans had been told those guys were big stars – but Milan was one of their own. A big hitter in business – his computer component company pioneered the boom that led to the creation of Silicon Valley – and a big personality in soccer. His first franchise was the San Jose Earthquakes and he built a team around good technical players from his homeland, then called Yugoslavia, and a scattering of well-known players from elsewhere: George Best, Jimmy Johnstone, Colin Bell and Vince Hilaire all played for San Jose while Milan was in charge, and it was always a great place to go.
They didn’t get huge crowds, less than 20,000, but it was a small ground so it never looked empty, the football was good and the atmosphere was very different. Milan had a guy called Crazy George who would come on to the pitch before the game with a tiger on a leash, or a bear, warming the crowd up. He would jump on your dug-out and start banging it with a drum or beating the drum right in front of you. It was all good fun, and quite mad, but it made Milan the biggest noise in the North American Soccer League and people wanted to work for him. My friend Jimmy Gabriel was manager of San Jose while George Best was there, but it didn’t last.
Now Milan was chairman of Portsmouth, via Charleroi in Belgium and OGC Nice in France. Coincidentally, I met him when he was taking over the club. I was still manager of West Ham and had arranged to play a testimonial for the old Portsmouth kit man, who had been there fifty years. It was the week after the end of the season and, typical West Ham, I remember it causing a massive row with the players because they were all looking to get away and start their holidays. In the end, we sent a good team – Ian Wright, Frank Lampard, Rio Ferdinand – but the situation down at Portsmouth was desperate. They were close to shutting the gates on the club, I was told on the night. That was when I met Milan. Bob McNab, the old Arsenal player, had brought him over. ‘How are you going, Harry?’ he said. ‘I’m thinking of buying this club – what do you think?’
‘It’s a fantastic club in terms of tradition,’ I told him. ‘They had a great team after the war, with Jimmy Dickinson. If you could get it going again, they love their football team down here.’ I don’t know if that influenced his decision, but he ended up buying Portsmouth and saving it from administration.
Three years later and I hadn’t long left West Ham when he got in touch with an interesting offer. The call came from David Deacon, whose family used to own the club. He was very polite. ‘Harry, I hope you don’t mind me ringing, but Milan Mandaric is looking for a director of football and would like you to meet him,’ said David. I told him I didn’t really know what a director of football was. When Terry Brown offered the role to Billy Bonds, I took it to mean more a club ambassador than a role with a defined duty. ‘Would you just come to the meeting and Milan will explain?’ Deacon pressed.
We arranged to meet for lunch the next day at Chewton Glen hotel in the New Forest. And it was lovely. We hit it off straight away. We talked football, he was very charming and he offered me the job that afternoon. He had interviewed another three or four managers, but in our brief time together he made his mind up. ‘Harry, I want you to take the job,’ he said.
I was still uncertain. ‘I don’t know, Milan,’ I told him. ‘What is it that I actually do?’
‘Your main responsibility will be to find players,’ he explained. That was something I knew I could do.
‘I can’t pay you the sort of money you were earning at West Ham; I cannot get anywhere near that,’ he continued. ‘But I’ll pay you a reasonable basic salary and ten per cent of any transfer profit we make from a player you have brought in.’
‘OK,’ I said. ‘We’ll see how it goes.’
He was right about Portsmouth’s status. The club was certainly no West Ham. To be blunt, it was a dump. Fratton Park was old and decrepit, the training ground was horrible, and they were only getting about 10,000 fans to matches. The money wasn’t a huge issue for me, though, because Terry Brown had paid up my West Ham contract in full, and at least this way I stayed involved in the game.
Graham Rix was the manager and, understandably, my arrival put him on edge. His initial reaction, and again I understand this, was that I wasn’t welcome at the training ground, but that didn’t bother me: I didn’t see going there as part of my role anyway. What I became, basically, was Milan’s mate and his driver – a shoulder to lean on because he had spent millions saving Portsmouth from administration and, frankly, the place was going nowhere. Graham was a good lad and, I’m told, a good coach, but it wasn’t reflected in the results. Portsmouth had finished 20th in Division One (now the Championship) in 2000–01, a point above the relegated clubs. The next season wasn’t much better. After a promising start the club went steadily downhill and lost 4–1 at home to Leyton Orient in the FA Cup, having already been knocked out of the League Cup by Colchester United. At those times, my job, as well as chauffeur, was to keep Milan in check. I remember one game at West Bromwich Albion, when we were 5–0 down at half-time. ‘Right, Harry,’ said Milan, ‘we are going home.’
I told him we couldn’t go home. ‘You’ve got to go to the boardroom,’ I said. ‘We can’t all just walk out. It’s bad manners.’
‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I am ashamed.’
